Ron Darling, Frank Viola and NCAA baseball’s greatest game ever, 40 years on

The “considerable event” is now widely considered to be the greatest college baseball game ever played. It was a pitching duel for the ages between two future big-league all-stars, both of whom ground their way into extra innings like earthmovers, saturating the box score with zeros for three hours, until a final score of 1-0 was finally hung on the scoreboard as darkness fell over the old gray and green ballpark. The two pitchers left the field that night to a standing ovation. On this date every year since, that applause starts again. Angell’s essay from that day, “The Web of the Game,” considered perhaps the greatest baseball essay ever penned, is retweeted again. And people stare at those stat lines in disbelief again.

Ron Darling, Yale: 12 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 5 BB, 16 K, 190 pitches thrown, no-hitter through 11
Frank Viola, St. John’s: 11 IP, 7 H, 0 R, 4 BB, 8 K, 160+ pitches thrown

“I’m a little surprised how the story of that game continues to be told,” Darling recalled when asked about the game last fall. He was a 20-year-old junior that day in ‘81. “Because I think the last person who can enjoy an athletic event is the person who’s in the middle of it. Especially when that person is pitching the game of his life but can never get comfortable because the other guy is doing the same.”

“I am 61 years old, I have been in baseball since I was a teenager, and it is the greatest game I have ever seen pitched,” Viola remembered on Wednesday, sitting in a dugout in High Point, North Carolina, where he is the pitching coach for the independent minor league High Point Rockers. “I witnessed David Cone striking out [19] Phillies; I saw Chris Bosio throw a no-hitter against the Red Sox in Seattle; Roger Clemens, Doc Gooden, you name it. None were better than what I saw that day. And it wasn’t me. It was Ronnie.”